How to save the world

This is a swarm of bees.  It is composed of several thousand worker bees, a handful of drones and a queen.  When the weather becomes cooler toward the last quarter of the year, a bee colony, in its instinct to ensure its specie’s survival, will produce several queen cells.  When a queen bee is about to emerge from her cell, the old queen will exit the hive, bringing along with her half of the colony in search for a new home.  This is what is called a swarm, a buzzing cloud of insects that looks threatening but is actually quite docile.

Let me explain that. 

You see bees only become aggressive when they sense that their home is in danger.  Hence, you can actually sit beside a hive for hours in a non-threatening way (meaning you are relaxed), observe their comings and goings, and not get stung at all.  But since a swarm is still looking for a home, it has nothing to protect – meaning they are not prone to sting.  Of course, you don’t approach a swarm recklessly then take a swing at it just because they are at their tamest.  Do that to a stranger (a person this time) and it is logical to expect retaliation.

However, before the swarm can find a new home, it will usually gather first under a tree branch where it will stay for as short as an hour to as long as a day.  The length of its stopover depends on how quickly or slowly the scout bees (worker bees assigned to find a new home, usually a hole in the wall or a tree, or a box, or an abandoned house) can search for a relocation site.  When a scout bee had assessed that she (yes, a female) has found a suitable home, she will go back to the swarm, announce to everyone that they are ready to move, then guide the swarm – worker bees, drones and queen – to their new abode.  But until that happens, the beekeeper can capture the swarm and then place it inside a new box that is prepared with a few frames taken from the box where the particular swarm came from.

But I don’t think getting a swarm would make it to anyone’s wish list this Christmas, after all, you can’t wear it, play games on it, use it to call friends, or start a fun conversation with it unless you consider stings, swelling and throbbing pain as topics you’d like to swap stories with friends.  That would be so uncool.

I have been receiving these gifts since early October.  By the time the swarming season ends in around February next year, I would have increased my number of colonies to around 30.  Cool, right?

Well, when you romanticize about the uniqueness of this pursuit and that one can actually earn a little on the side while you’re at it, then yes, I guess it is cool.

But being a beekeeper is not cool, especially when I am in my bee suit, sweating like a boxer who overshot the weight limit by two pounds and trying to go under the limit in an hour’s time, or when I am inspecting a hive unprotected and some bees decide that my presence is not welcome and begin giving up their lives (bees die soon after stinging) to shoo me away (I have experienced getting stung 20 to 30 in one go on several occasions), or when I find myself some fifteen feet up a tree trying to capture a swarm, which sometimes makes me question the sanity of what I am doing, or the safety of it.  After all, at 6’1” and 180 pounds, I am a fairly large and heavy man by any tree branch standard.

So why do I do it?

First, it was fascination.  Then I realized it could be a hobby that can also be an alternative source of income.  Now, it is all those, plus it has grown into some sort of advocacy – one that is bigger than what I do.  Now more than ever, call me a suffering idealist, I believe that what I do will help save the world, a mission that is nice to hear but difficult to substantiate with action because it usually means either having to give up something or doing something that may be inconvenient, bothersome, or uncool.

According to scientists, bees are central to the survival of humans because it comes in contact with two-thirds of the food that we and land animals eat, or the foods that animals that we eat, eat.   They say that should bees go because of a combination of global warming, heavy use of insecticides and decimation of land dedicated to planting, so will humans, not long after.

So are bees really important?  I don’t know.  Maybe.  Scientists are positive that they are.  But then again, scientists do say a lot.

They say that global warming is now in play and that its effects – drier dry seasons characterized by extreme heat spells and wetter wet seasons with stronger typhoons and storms unlike any experienced before – will be catastrophic, and that the Philippines will be one of the most at risk of these global climatic upheavals.

Maybe they are onto something.

Yolanda happens and its devastation is unparalleled in Philippine history that is already long in cataclysmic weather and geological spasms, from earthquakes to volcanic eruptions to torrential monsoons and destructive typhoons. 

They say Yolanda sets the record for raw power.  What’s more terrifying is that records, just like political promises, are meant to be broken; it’s just a matter of when, how frequent, and at what cost.

We, those that are not directly or as severely affected by Yolanda, especially those of us here in Luzon, are lucky, extremely lucky.  Luck involves probability.  And we may soon run out of luck.

In 2012, also nearing Christmas, typhoon Pablo literally leveled a large swath of Mindanao, leaving thousands dead in its wake.  And this year, Yolanda violently drops by on a slightly higher trajectory – leveling Visayas.  Next year, it is probable that a new monster will form and it will be out to get us this time.

So while the nation, with the help of the global community, is desperately trying to resuscitate Visayas, with donations and rebuilding strategies, it is also imperative that Yolanda should not be treated as an isolated case – a fluke of nature.  It is not.  We, you and I, had a hand in its making.  And the probability is high that it is going to happen again, unless we desperately act as if our lives and everything that we deem important depended on it.

It is time to do the uncool things.  Now that you have read this far, I ask you – for all our sake – to do something uncool: sweat it by walking or biking instead of riding your own car, eschew gadgets and devices that consume disproportionately large amounts of energy, avoid foods that take a lot of resources to produce such as animal meats, plant a tree, or even a flowering plant in a pot, give to World Wide Fund, dispose garbage properly, call out someone who unmindfully litter, recycle, share what you don’t need, spread the word, tell your kids, encourage the youth to be mindful of what they do.  Whatever it is, do something. Anything. Doing nothing is not an option.  I hope you realize that Yolanda has made that very clear.

I’ll be doing all of the above, including climbing trees to catch swarms.